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In Windows 95, 98 and NT 4/5/5.1/5.2:
Type eventvwr.exe at the Start > Run prompt to access
the Event Viewer, the central reporting location for Windows. Both
third party applications and Windows itself adds entries to this collection
of log files to keep you, the system administrator, up to date on important
events and errors that occur.

Event Viewer on the A+ Exam

Certain Windows servers will have additional logs visible in Event Viewer, such as the DNS log and the Replication Log. These only appear in specific circumstances, and are outside the scope of the A+ exam.

On most machines, the Event Viewer
comprises of three separate logging systems, the application log, the
security log and the system log. Although not a hard and fast rule,
most third party applications will log information to the application
log. Windows will log information into both the application and system
logs (depending on the type of information logged), whilst a specific
subsystem of Windows will log security related events to the security
log.

The following screenshot shows a
typical Event Viewer display.

Figure 109: Event Viewer

In the left hand pane are
the available log files, whilst in the right hand pane are the events
relating to the currently selected log file. Double clicking on an
event in the right hand pane displays further information relating to
it in a new dialog.

Event Troubleshooting Resource

www.eventid.net is an invaluable source of help and information when troubleshooting obscure events. Simply enter the event id and see what other people have done to resolve the issue.

There are only three types of events
logged to any log file: Information, Error and Warning. Information
messages are usually benign and can be safely ignored when troubleshooting,
except for one. When Windows crashes, an event is written to the system
log stating, The previous system shut down was unexpected.
For some unknown reason, this is logged as information. Clearly, Microsoft
thought a crashing server was nothing to be concerned about!

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